7 Best LinkedIn Ad Tips That Will Drive Conversions

LinkedIn is the perfect social media platform for anyone looking to build their professional portfolio while connecting with people who are looking to do the same. Since LinkedIn’s users are made up of entrepreneurs, CEOs, marketing and sales reps, and other business professionals, it’s a great place to advertise to a highly qualified demographic. Advertising on LinkedIn is more expensive than other social media channels, but it also leads to a relevant audience viewing your ads, and highly qualified leads. Since LinkedIn advertising can get expensive, it’s important to ensure your ads are high quality and delivering to your target market. Keep reading for the 7 best LinkedIn Ad tips that will drive conversions.

1. Determine the Type of LinkedIn Ad

The type of advertisement that you choose to run on LinkedIn will be determined by the content you are looking to share, your target market, as well as your campaign goals. Every type of ad has its pros and cons, and not every type of ad will work for every business. Below I’ve listed some of the most popular ad types for you to consider.

Sponsored Content

Essentially, sponsored content are posts that are promoted. You can promote any of the content you have previously shared by clicking “Boost Post” or you can directly create a sponsored post in your LinkedIn Ads Manager account. Sponsored content can be used for a variety of reasons, including increasing brand awareness, traffic to your website, and generating engagement and followers. Sponsored content also can look like organic content, so it seems less like an advertisement than some other forms mentioned on this list. Almost every type of business can benefit from sponsored content ads. 

Message Ads

This is one of my favorite LinkedIn ad tips. I’m sure you have gotten your fair share of message ads on LinkedIn. When you set up message ads, you will create personalized messages with very specific content and a call to action. Message ads are delivered to highly relevant audiences and are only delivered to people who are active on LinkedIn, so you don’t need to worry about the message not being seen or delivered. While the max suggested number of characters is 1000, messages with under 500 characters have a 46% higher click-through rate. If you want more information about how to reach out to your prospects on LinkedIn, check out this article.

Text Ads

Text ads are displayed on the side of the home page, as seen in the image below. They are cost-per-click (CPC) ads, so you only pay for them when they are clicked on. Text ads are great for driving traffic to your website and posting jobs. You have the option to add an image to the ad or keep it as just text.

2. Monitor Your Campaign Performance

Just like any other form of advertising, you will want to know how successful your LinkedIn campaigns are. You will want to see what ads are leading to the most conversions, and what ads are not driving results. For the best results, you should check how your ads are doing regularly. It’s helpful to set aside some time every week, even if it’s just 10 minutes, to take a look at your campaigns. Below, I’ve listed two different ways for you to monitor your campaign performance.

LinkedIn Insight Tag

To use the LinkedIn Insight Tag, you will need to add some JavaScript to your website to track the conversions that you set up. You can also use it to set up remarketing campaigns. In your account, you can see total conversions, as well as click conversions and view conversions. By keeping track of your conversions, you can optimize your ads to ensure your ads are getting as much interaction as possible. You also have the option to let LinkedIn automatically optimize your campaign for even more conversions.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great place to compare how all of your marketing campaigns are doing compared to each other. If you are running ads across several channels, it’s helpful to see what platforms result in the most conversions, so you can invest in the best performing channels, and change what channels are not performing well. You can also use Google Analytics to see what pages your LinkedIn traffic is the most interested in, how long they spend on certain pages, or if the majority of your leads are bouncing. 

3. A/B Testing

A/B testing is an essential part of ensuring that your ads are running at their full potential. For example, if you’re interested in running message ads, you should run two different versions of the ad. The ads should have the same general idea but be worded in a slightly different way. You should run them for the same amount of time and all other conditions like budget and targeting should match as well. Once you run them for long enough to get data, generally at least a few weeks, then you can compare the data to make a decision on which one works best. Just because one ad had more conversions doesn’t mean that the other ad was a failure. Marketing is all about trial and error, and sometimes certain ads just don’t do as well as others.

4. Start Your Bid and Budget Low

As I mentioned before, LinkedIn can get pretty pricey. Don’t be fooled by LinkedIn’s recommendations, they are a business and are trying to make money too. You don’t necessarily need to bid high to drive the most conversions. If you start bidding low, you can always increase your budget down the road, once you know the ad is successful. In addition, don’t feel like you always need to use your entire budget every week. Oftentimes social media ads will reach a plateau, where even if you spend more, there won’t be more conversions.

5. Exclude Small Companies

This tip depends on what your business does – if you focus on helping small companies disregard this tip! However, a lot of companies don’t focus on businesses that have less than 10 employees. If your product is expensive, used by extensive sales teams, or has a big learning curve, this feature can help you narrow down who your ads are shown to. In your campaign manager, you can set your ads to exclude companies that have “2-10 employees”, “11-50 employees”, etc. You can also use this feature to exclude certain job titles and/or locations. These features are great to ensure your prospects are highly relevant and worth the price of their conversions.

6. Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) is one of the best features LinkedIn has to offer. ABM campaigns allow you to target professionals by their demographics including job title, company name, location, and more. By using these features, you can target the most qualified and specific prospects with your ads. Since you are only targeting a specific audience, your impressions may be low, but your conversions will be high. To make this even easier, you can upload a list of up to 300,000 companies that you want to target. For information on how to do this, check out this LinkedIn Support article.

7. Want to Identify More Leads On LinkedIn?

Linkedin ad tips can only get you so far. Wouldn’t it be nice to know all of your website visitors and their LinkedIn profiles? With Visitor Queue, you can! We are a B2B lead generation software that identifies the businesses that visit your website. Along with their employee’s contact information like email, phone number, and social media links including LinkedIn. Generate 10-20% more revenue with Visitor Queue!

Wrap Up

LinkedIn is one of the best social media platforms to advertise on because of its high-quality targeting options. Although it is pricey, the price is worth the number of conversions you can get. I hope you were able to learn more about the best ways to drive conversions with our LinkedIn ad tips. As always, if you have any questions about how Visitor Queue can identify more leads for you, please reach out!